How to get good at Shogun 2?

[Smokedice]

Hi, I play normal difficulty, I am very good at Empire Total War, Napoleon, and Fall of the Samurai (thats 90% of my gametime in Shogun 2)

However, I cannot seem to get the hang of regular shogun 2! I just don't get it, on the campaign map I am constantly outnumbered by huge stacks of AI armies and on the battles everything goes by so fast and I can never fight a huge battle.

Despite pausing and slowing down time in battles (which I NEVER had to do in FoTS) I keep getting owned! I really want to get better at Shogun 2 but the tutorials tell me squat. :( Any help?

[bkkm12]

Hugh stack? How about you. what do u have? research tech tree benefit for your clan (example: Takeda, research cav, Shimazu research sword etc...) Find good allied, a dependable one, and kill the crazy or ambitious one first.

[鬼 武士]

I don't know how familiar you are with Shogun 2, but these are the main guidelines.
The main battle rules are as follows:

1. Archers are very powerful because they are the only common ranged units.
2. Yari (spears) are excellent for defense, horrible for attack.
3. Swordsmen are all-around good soldiers.
4. No-Dachi are for charges, and only charges.
5. Cavalry are only good for breaking units and cutting down fleeing enemies.
6. Units aside from peasants will fight to the death or very nearly unless in a completely hopeless situation (2000 vs 20, they will run on first contact.)

The main campaign rules are as follows:

1. Normal is roughly equivelant to hard difficulty on other games, and the AI does 'cheat' on higher difficulties.
2. If you are playing as the Oda you either expand rapidly or die, and you should only use peasants.
3. If you are near trade nodes, the extra income is absolutely essential for unit upkeep.

If you are playing vanilla Shogun 2 the units move very quickly so you may want to get one of the overhaul mods for that.

[Schneeblind]

Yari Ashigaru in Spearwall formation can hold off enemy troops very well, not only cavalry

[traveller]

The tutorial just wants you to take the six provinces, but use the tutorial to take the four other provinces available. It will required a large force to take some of those provinces and you will become more proficient with practice. Take them all. Try building only Ashigaru armies, If you can win a battle with them, then Samurai will be easier. Ashigaru form spear wall. Make use of that.

Practice with Magistrates, Ninjas and Monks. They are very helpful, but require time to get proficient. I place my agents in a fortress of one of my provinces and wait for them to go up one level and then send the out on simple missions. A good Monk can prevent a Christian province from rebeling and can start a rebelion in a enemies or potential enemies provinces. It is always good to have a Monk follow your army to preach to any province you have just conquered.

Study agriculture to improve your rice fields and allow you to build bigger fortresses, and it is good to study the bow until you get fire arrows. Fire arrows make a big difference, especially with your bow ships. My armies are almost always 50% bow units with the rest spear and one cavalry to run down routing units or get behind them and start a cascade of rout from one end to the other of their line. Study all aspects, but make food and bow a priority.

So the tutorial is your friend, but push past its requirements, and use it to practice these ideas and find what works for you.

Practice practice practice. And good luck.

[Smokedice]

Originally posted by 鬼 武士:

The main campaign rules are as follows:

1. Normal is roughly equivelant to hard difficulty on other games, and the AI does 'cheat' on higher difficulties.
2. If you are playing as the Oda you either expand rapidly or die, and you should only use peasants.
3. If you are near trade nodes, the extra income is absolutely essential for unit upkeep.

If you are playing vanilla Shogun 2 the units move very quickly so you may want to get one of the overhaul mods for that.

the difficulties between regular Shogun 2 and FoTS must be quite different though, because in FoTS, on Easy the AI will almost never recruit higher than regular line infantry armies and wooden ships with regular shot (no imperial/shogunate infantry, iron-plated ships, or armour piercing shells, or gatling guns). But on Easy in Shogun 2 the AI does still get all the samurai units and still has the edge on me :l

[Breezy101]

You say huge stacks.. how many turns is this? 30-40? You you should have atleast 2 upgrades in the money-perk tree(Forgot the name, haven't played in awhile) upgrade a couple farm lands and maybe up to the 7 growth per turn and 2 global food(I think). You should have atleast 3 provinces by 30-40 turns, and early game ONLY spend money on troops if you suspect your military force is becoming labeled 'Weak' rather than 'Normal' if you can, try to get out some trade ships to work the routes. they benefit the military force internal numbers. (Around 40 trade ships, and some ground military will give you 'Strong' labeled military) if you become 'Weak' the computer will notice this and even your allies will turn against you. If you can survive these first 30-40 turns, your economy even on 3 or 4 towns will BOOM. And only upgrade military buildings on blacksmith towns, try to capture one ASAP, if you need to and want to conserve cash, but still want to take a town, get 5-6 bows, and however many Yari, you'll be fine. I find that FOTS is a lot faster paced(early game) than normal shogun IMO, so you may not be used to this 5-6 bow, and yari thing.

[Breezy101]

Also Metsuke, with a Administering towns bonus(upon level up) will add to taxes, you can get over 100% tax income and flip 10-20k+ from 1 'profit province' like the gold mine ones or fletchers(Depends on the profit of the trade resource) it's best to get metsuke's ASAP, there are many other tips to gaining hugewealth but that's for you to find out haha

[Smokedice]

It happened again! I'm Date and I've got ashigaru yari and bow, some samurai, and I'm being harassed by Taked with full stacks of samurai katana, cavalry, and bow! Some "easy/normal" difficulty!

[easytarget]

Date are a tough clan to play, you're going to run into a three way civil war going on between the Takeda, Uesugi and Hojo every single time, and it's one you can't very well ignore as that is your only path to expansion as the Date.

As I've suggested previously to those having a hard time getting their feet under them playing Shogun 2, play as the Shimazu.

[Smokedice]

Alright. here is tonight's story!

Shimazu on Easy:

Year is 1549, I have 3 provinces, at war with the clans on my island. FULL BLOWN stack of spears and bows come to intercept my army which is half as large (filled with ashigaru because of low money). Total defeat. My trade ships are consumed by 3 enemy fleets.

ON WHAT PLANET IS THIS EASY? HOW IN THE FLIPPIN' FLAPPIN' HECK?! I'M ABOUT TO PUNCH IN MY SCREEN!

[Smokedice]

going back to playing FoTS only, the frustration from Shogun 2 regular is so viscerally unreal

[Iceira]

try play coup with a mentor that can play for you and show you,.it could be minor details you need to change.

just because its easy dont mean its easy if you dont do right thing on right time,

[Haakon]

So, here's how I generally play Chosokabe on normal, this gets you the whole Shikoku island and generally no enemies:

Turn 1: Build the wood and harbour upgrade, get two units of ashigaru bowmen. Take all your units and kill the lousy rebels. (Well technically they're loyalists and you're rebels but potato potato.)

Turn two: Return to the castle, start the farm upgrade, and get two yari ashigaru.
Turn three Take your armies to the northwest, start the road upgrade and two yari ashigaru. Now your port should be done. Build a bow kobaya the next four turns, and send them towards the southern shipping routes, and either occupy or observe who have the trade routes. This lets you see who have the income advantage on the southern island, thus is the biggest threat. This lets you find out who you should invade first. there.
Turn four: Keep moving towards the province, train your final two yari ashigaru.
Turn five: Take the province, repair all damage, set it to no-taxes to make it not revolt against you and head for the border of Sanuki.
Turn six: Take Sanuki, and take down the remnant that lays in ambush to the south.
Turn seven: Move towards the border of Awa, check Iyo's status, you should be able to collect taxes there now.
Turn eight: Invade Awa.
Turn nine, you should now take Awa's castle, and start moving towards the Awaji island.
From here, you have five secure regions. Either head towards Settsu and get embroiled in the wars there so you can get the shogunate, preventing the realm divide, or head towards Hizen and Tsukushi so you can get all the southern trade routes.

What do I research?
1: Get the upgrade to the bowmen.
2: Get monastery.
3: Get Equal Fields
4: Get the upgraded monastery:
5: Get Chonindo
6: Start on more military upgrades.

After that you'll have a massive amount of food surplus.
Do not ever, EVER upgrade markets. Remember: +1 food surplus means +1 growth every turn in every province. Therefore you should also not upgrade castles unless you need to for units.

Satsuma, Higo, Buzen and Awa are candidates for unit recruitment if you want to take the island to the south first. After that you're about two pieces of land away from realm divide, but you shouldn't be worried about that, because your land is better than theirs and your economy is much better than theirs.

As for what units to get, I tend to go for:
Naginata Samurai, Naginata Monks, Samura and Warrior Monk bowmen, and Yari cavalry. This way I don't need to research sword techs, so I can spend the tech upgrades on more money.

That should get you started. It won't make you an expert, but it helps somewhat. But remember that in Medieval, Rome and Empire you were building an empire so you could hang back, in Shogun, you have to expand fast, then consolidate as fast as you can. THEN take on the world. Be ready for that.

[aholavalava]

yari ashigaur's are your best friends in early games. have them on spear walls and they can take a lot of beatings. Get the high ground to negate charges or use the forests to lessen damage from archers. keep your general near the bulk of your troops to keep morale high. watch a few youtube vids of shogun 2 and see how others take out enemies and learn to adapt.

[Odd fella]

Unfortunatley there are some elements you're unable to work around with cunning and tactical planning. This is because some events are scripted so no matter how clever you are, these scripted events sort of ruin it on a strategic level.

It's like in Rome 2 where you've got to make sure you have very little money each turn otherwise having too much money in the treasury will trigger a political event whereby you have 2 choices - payup or lose seats.